What you are, right now, is a field of subjectivity. All the things you believe you are, a body, a mind, an occupation, an emotional state, a relationship - all these things arise in this field of subjectivity or awareness.
This field is all you have ever been, but the belief that you are this or that thing (body-mind) has so captured your attention that this illusion has possessed your entire life. Nevertheless, this captured attention is also only ever an appearance in you.
What else could it be?
This illusion is the source of the “future”, and its associated anxieties.
We can imagine the future in a couple of different ways. First, the future can be thought of non-personally - perhaps we imagine a scene of the next president or prime minister being elected. Without any reference to a finite “me”, this is just a kind of vision - not so different from a dream. As it is, in itself, this vision need not cause any suffering.
Yet it can be a cause of suffering when there is the belief that “I” am somehow related to this vision, which we call the future. In such a case, there is a kind of simulation, whether conscious or not, of what we would feel if such a scenario came to be.
But notice what has occurred in such a simulation - we have taken ourselves to be, not the vast field of awareness, but rather a person who is situated in a future world. The mistake is imagining we are in the world, rather than the world and the feelings, thoughts etc. being in us.
This is the crucial change of reference or perspective, an upending of the world.
If there is the belief that our essence is a kind of conscious object moving around an often unpredictable, and potentially hostile world, then anxiety is a natural result. “If I don’t get this project finished tomorrow, I will be fired, and my family and I will be homeless and we will die!”. That full chain of consequences may not appear consciously, but it is implicit in the feelings of existential dread that often arise over such small matters.
However, these consequences are only possible for an object-me. The field of awareness or subjectivity can contain all of these phenomena without breaking a sweat, it is imperturbable. Therefore, no matter what happens or appears will be accepted by awareness, and hence awareness will be able to bear it.
It is only the false self, the phantom object-me constructed by the mind, which rises up with thoughts and feelings about a given situation after it has entered, and hence been accepted by, awareness. The mind is always producing a layer of interpretation on what-is, and from this comes the object-me and the anxiety inducing future.
It is all well and good to understand this intellectually, but it must be experienced for it to produce lasting insight. As I tend to say each post, a good exercise to experience this abiding in knowing-awareness is to try and “catch” the rising and vanishing of thoughts, feelings, perceptions and so on. In this way you may come in knowing contact with the ground of your being, the field of vast, spacious awareness, which is present under all risings and fallings.
Once a taste is received of this knowing - this objectless knowing - then the illusions can gradually fall away. You can see that what you think you are is only a transitory mental event, not the real thing. You can understand that all that you know - sights, sounds, thoughts, sensations, and the quiet knowing-awareness - all this is You, not just a part of it. Then you can begin to act with this new understanding, and let the “me” thoughts of the separate self drop away.
The anxious future then vanishes, for there is no longer a “little me” to protect. Nothing can hurt this dimensionless, timeless, field of knowing.
Only peace remains.
thank you so much for this…
Thank you Andrew! 🌳🍃🪴🌱